


Take This Waltz

by damnslippyplanet



Series: Songs of Experience [4]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Dancing, Emotional Idiots In Love, Inasmuch as 'hey remember that time you gutted me' can ever be fluffy, M/M, Really just pure tooth-rotting fluff here, UST heading rapidly for RST
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-19
Updated: 2016-03-19
Packaged: 2018-05-27 18:05:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6294439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/damnslippyplanet/pseuds/damnslippyplanet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He remembers that dream well.  There'd been bones strewn across the floor; they'd danced smoothly around them as if they were scattered rose petals.  The office had smelled of death and, oddly, brandy. He'd pressed closer, into the antlers piercing him, and he'd felt strangely at peace. Abigail had played the harpsichord for their dance, and each note had sounded like something fragile shattering.  He'd woken with a face wet with something that might have been sweat and might have been tears.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Take This Waltz

**Author's Note:**

  * For [darkpriestess](https://archiveofourown.org/users/darkpriestess/gifts).



> _Take this waltz, take this waltz_
> 
> _Take its broken waist in your hand_
> 
> _This waltz, this waltz, this waltz, this waltz_
> 
> _With its very own breath of brandy and Death_
> 
> _Dragging its tail in the sea_
> 
> _~ Leonard Cohen, “Take This Waltz.”_

  
Hannibal eyes the phone suspiciously, as a Strauss waltz pours from its tiny speaker, tinny but perfectly audible.  He looks entirely unconvinced that this even counts as music.  Will represses a grin, partly in an effort not to be an asshole, and mostly because of the damn stitches that pull at his cheek.  They should be out any day now, but meanwhile he's finding himself wishing he had Hannibal's tendency to emote with microexpressions.

"If you wanted a record player and an entire library of vinyl, you should have bought us a bigger boat," is all he says. "Give it a shot.  If you really can't handle this I’ll find you something with real speakers next time we're on shore, but there's something to be said for compactness and portability in this situation."

"Strauss is probably spinning in his grave right now," Hannibal grumbles.

"Strauss might have other concerns about the two of us besides our sound system." Will smiles and regrets it immediately. "Ouch."

Hannibal's up and across the tiny room immediately.  Will knows perfectly well it's unnecessary; he's healing well, the residual soreness just is what it is and will go away. What he's not as sure of is whether _Hannibal_ knows it's an unnecessary and flimsy excuse for closeness, or whether he's fooled himself into thinking it's clinical concern.  He lets Hannibal tilt his jaw just so, to examine the stitches for any signs of redness or infection.

He knows there won't be any. They're both healing well. Will's coming slowly to terms with what he's done and where he is; long hours spent watching the waves have provided plenty of time to think.  He knows what he wants in broad outline, if perhaps not in exhaustive detail. Although he’s spent some time considering the exhaustive detail, each of the last three nights, each capped with a goodnight kiss that hasn’t otherwise been discussed between them.

Before Hannibal can move away again he asks, half-idly and without any real question mark in his voice, "I assume you waltz annoyingly well."  He rests a hand on Hannibal's arm to hold him in place, ever so lightly.  Hannibal could move away easily if he wanted to.

Hannibal does not move away.  He cocks his head slightly and looks at Will's hand but stays.  He sounds mild and steady enough as he answers, "I won't be so trite as to say that things worth doing are worth doing well, but I've done my share of waltzing and haven't had any complaints."

Will can just picture that.  All those charitable functions in Baltimore.  All those people having no idea who they were dancing with.  He wonders how many of them still wake from nightmares.  How many of them have gone vegetarian.  How many of them Hannibal fed him in the guise of meat spiced and sauced so as to be believable as other kinds of flesh. He doesn't ask; that's well into the realm of things they're not discussing.

"I'm terrible at it myself. Two left feet."  

It's true as far as it goes. Will doesn't go on to explain that Molly had tried to teach him twice.  Both attempts had ended disastrously but sweetly. They'd had a small quiet wedding for many reasons, but Molly had liked to claim it was because she couldn't be seen dancing with Will in public.  He'd never minded the joke.  There were so many real things to blame him for and she'd never for a second laid any of them at his feet; her teasing accusations about the truly inconsequential things were something he gladly accepted instead.

He takes a deep breath and shuts those memories away with others he's not currently indulging.  Leaves his hand on Hannibal's arm and says, "Maybe I'd be better at it with someone else leading. Show me?"

He senses more than actually sees Hannibal go blank for a moment, in a rare instant of being caught off guard.  In one of those moments of _seeing_ Hannibal perfectly clearly, Will knows with utter certainty that he's imagined taking Will dancing.  Probably imagined in perfect detail some horrible suit he intends to buy, and some fancy ballroom where they would whirl around the room together to the strains of a pretentious string quartet.  No doubt in Hannibal's fantasy Will's hair is perfectly slicked and he's wearing expensive cologne and he moves smoothly enough that everyone watches them and envies each of them the other's company.

That's not who Will is. That's never who Will is going to be.  But he can be this, here: a small room barely big enough for a small circle of dance steps, the gentle swelling of waves making footing unsteady, their accompaniment a downloaded MP3 file of what Hannibal has deemed a second-rate orchestra.  No doubt he's going to step on Hannibal's toes several times.

If Hannibal's going to be disappointed in the reality of Will versus his imaginings, they should find out soon before what's growing between them goes much farther. He increases the pressure of his hand slightly against Hannibal's arm and asks again: "Dance with me."

Hannibal blinks at him and whatever far-away place he'd gone behind his eyes, he comes back to Will now.  At least enough to make the small adjustment necessary to rest a hand at the small of Will's back. Careful and precise.  Almost formal, nearly polite, except that all the wind goes out of Hannibal at the touch, as if he's been punched in the solar plexus.

There's a gravel to Hannibal's voice when he says, "There isn't really enough room for this."  Not _no_ , or even _what game are you playing?_

Will rewards the lack of questioning with a little shrug, ignoring the pull in his injured shoulder, and says, "We'll make it work."   _We'll make all of this work._

And they do, more or less.  It's nothing anyone would call a waltz, really.  Closer to a sway with some small steps thrown in.  There's no room for anything else; the cabin's neat and efficient and compact, empty space used for storage and furniture, not exactly designed for whatever dance this is that they're doing.

They don't speak for a while; what would they say?  Talking about it would make it too concrete.  Instead it's all silent communication. Will's hand moving slightly up Hannibal's arm; Hannibal's hand increasing its pressure at his back and Will letting that warm steady pressure move him closer the way he knows Hannibal wants him.

Eventually Will says, "I had a dream like this once. We were dancing in your office and then you grew antlers. Big curving ones, sharp and gleaming." If he closes his eyes, he can almost re-summon the dream.  "They were just on your head at first, and then they started growing from your arms too. Your hands, where you were touching me. They pierced right through my skin, like Cassie Boyle.  I didn’t realize it at first; it didn’t hurt at all."

He remembers that dream well.  There'd been bones strewn across the floor; they'd danced smoothly around them as if they were scattered rose petals.  The office had smelled of death and, oddly, brandy. He'd pressed closer, into the antlers piercing him, and he'd felt strangely at peace. Abigail had played the harpsichord for their dance, and each note had sounded like something fragile shattering.  He'd woken with a face wet with something that might have been sweat and might have been tears.

He shakes off the memory and watches Hannibal wondering, not asking the question - had the dream been before, or after, the knife sharp and hot inside Will, ripping him apart?  A reliving of that night, or an anticipation of it?

Maybe he won't answer; leave that question to twist and burn in Hannibal's gut for a while. There's a certain savage temptation to earn repayment for some of the agonizing weeks in the hospital.  But he supposes that if they're going to survive each other, it might be good to learn some new steps that go beyond injury and reckoning, hurt and payback.  

"It was in the hospital," he offers, a gift of an answer to an unasked question. "While you were in Florence. The hospital therapist said it was my mind trying to come to terms with my physical pain.  She was prone to the most obvious interpretation of any given statement.  You'd have hated her. _I_ hated her. I did a few mandatory sessions so they'd let me out, but I started making up dreams instead of telling her the real ones. Psych 101 stuff. Abandonment metaphors. Teeth falling out. She loved it."

Hannibal's voice catches on a sound that might be a laugh, and Will doesn't think too hard about what he wants to do - he just goes ahead and presses the good side of his face against Hannibal's throat, in the hollow where it joins with his shoulder.  He feels his way to Hannibal’s pulse and presses his mouth against it, not particularly gently.

Hannibal finally breaks then, with a shudder, and asks the other question he's been resisting - "What are you doing, Will?"

Will tells a half-truth.  "I'm conditioning you to get over your stupid problem with listening to music this way," he says, and doesn't move even though his voice is half-muffled from where he's pressed in close now

"Conditioning doesn't work as well if the other person is aware of it." Hannibal's hardly moving at all, now; it's barely even a sway, and there definitely aren't any more steps.  They're mostly just...standing, touching in something like a hug, something like the clifftop, breathing together, warm and close.

Will makes a little motion that might be a nuzzle, pressing himself in closer for a moment against Hannibal’s skin before he pulls away enough to be audible.  "Sure. But that's most people, not us.  I think our games work better when we both know we're playing, don't you?"  Hannibal doesn't have an answer for that.  Will didn't expect him to.  He presses, "Do you care even the tiniest bit about the damn sound quality right now?"

And that gets him a real laugh, warm and rumbling and Will can _feel_ it through his body where they're touching.  "It seems to have slipped down my list of concerns," he concedes.

"Okay.  So it's working. Shut up and lead," he says, almost a whisper given how close he is to Hannibal's ear right now.

For one, mercifully and unexpectedly, Hannibal shuts up, and they dance until well after the song ends.

**Author's Note:**

> Songprompt!verse continues with a prompt from darkpriestess. Hope you like it, my dear.


End file.
